All at Sea ..... Then it's Land Ho, South Georgia

All at Sea ..... Saturday 16 December

Been at sea now for nearly 48 hours with no sight of land, nothing but cold, grey sea for 360 degrees. We are steadily steaming towards South Georgia which we apparently will reach tomorrow. This time out has given us a chance to catch up on the washing of the smalls, writing postcards (to be posted in SG of course...), and phone home, write up diary and this blog! Weather now getting increasingly cold, sea choppy but we have managed to "find" our sea legs and are both well.

So what can I tell you? Haven't written much about daily life on board ship have I? We eat far too much, interspersed with lectures on all subjects relevant to where we are going (or have been). A typical day like today for instance, we had a geology lecture on the formation of S Georgia, followed by a film about Shackleton (my hero) and am about to head off for a briefing on our arrival in SG at some ungodly hour in the morning! In between all the eating and drinking, we go on deck in an ever-increasing amount of clothes and spot birds, whales, penguins or seals - whichever happen to be around at the time.

As is typical of us, we have a "drinking gang" who nightly meet in the bar for pre-dinner drinks, we have dinner followed by a nightcap back in the bar then it’s off to bed - not a bad life really! Oh and this afternoon we had a BBQ and beer on deck in freezing temperatures - bit bizarre really but a lot of fun. There is a gym on board which we go to on a daily basis, look at and leave - will have to walk twice as far whenever we land to just keep even with the intake!!!

Doug has now seen 4 different species of albatross (for those that care, they are Royal, Wandering, Black Browed and Grey Headed), storm petrels, shearwaters and more skuas.

Land Ho ..... South Georgia

Sunday 17th December - arrived in the night at Elsehul and this morning took zodiacs out to look around the cove. Air temp with wind chill factor around minus 10, sea temp even colder - not planning on taking a dip here! Every imaginable inch of beach space is taken up with bull elephant seals (defending their territory), females and pups - an amazing sight! Spent 2 hours out on the water and took almost as long to defrost... Have just returned from Prion Island, our second landing today, where we walked among the seal colonies, clicking away like only good tourists do, and I can tell you bull seal are HUGE close up.... D says to tell you he saw a light mantled sooty shearwater (John, Sue, Jean, Peter and Neil, I hope you are reading this?)

Now going to send this off (at vast expense) and another will follow after we leave SG - we are staying here for 4 days, moving around the island, with 2 landings a day in different places. We then have 2 sea days on our way to the Antarctic Peninsula. Sorry there are no photos at the moment, will try and work something out when next get sea days.

Gotta go, need a shower before dinner.

Love ANNIE AND DOUG XXXXX